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Unless the results are powerfully obvious to you, you are probably wasting your money on a placebo.

During an intensely unhappy and stressful period of my life involving a landlord, housing agency and poor living conditions, my health began to suffer. I have always eaten a healthy a balanced diet including lots of fruit and vegetables and also plenty of fresh and home-cooked foods, seaweeds, etc, but due to prolonged stress from the housing issue I noticed that my hair had started falling out. Not in huge clumps, but enough to be noticeable to myself and my partner.

I have quite thick hair so it was not difficult to disguise the thinned out areas of hair, but I was worried about it. I had some blood tests done but everything came back normal, including my vitamin levels, so I couldn't attribute the hair loss to lack of iron. The doctor told me that my minor hair loss would sort itself out over time but if not then I should come back to see him.

I purchased a pack of Florisene tablets after my sister recommended them. She has had hair loss problems since her early 20s and she swears by these tablets, however it is worth noting here that she also takes other hair products and applies lotions and potions to her scalp on top of all that, so I did take her recommendation with a pinch of salt. But, I was also willing to give it a go. I bought the pack on a site to recommended online for £14 for a pack of 90 tablets.

The tablets contain a high dose of iron, vitamin C and the amino acid L-lysine. The website recommends taking them if you have chronic telogen effluviu CTE, 'the most common type of hair loss'. I don't know of any stores that stock them however I was able to order mine online easily. The tablets do not have a strong smell or aftertaste to them like some vitamins do. They are small enough to swallow without any problems- I hate having to swallow really large tablets and capsules, so I can attest to them being an okay size.

The leaflet that came with the pack said to take one tablet a day, but that results would take a minimum of 3 months to be seen. So, that's what I did, for a whole month, and I didn't notice any difference but since I wanted to finish what I'd started I purchased 3 packs on offer from another website and carried on. And on. And on. That is the danger with these pills, they are just so easy to 'pop' but the results are quite hard to ascertain. Whenever I doubted them, I hopped online and read a few reviews about how amazing the pills are and how they can take 3, 4, 6 months to work. I wanted to believe them, but I started to fell bad every time I put in an order for more pills. Meanwhile, my hair continued to fall out. Since it's hard to know whether it might have been worse without these tablets, I can't say for certain that they didn't work at all.

After spending over £60 in total on these tablets, which I now believe are no different than taking a daily high dose vitamin and perhaps a combination of amino acids now and again, I called it a day and stopped taking them. And guess what? About 6 weeks later, I noticed that there was less hair on my pillow in the mornings and less in my hairbrush whenever I combed it. Someone else might still attribute this to the Florisene tablets, however I had also moved house in this time and ended the fiasco with my landlord and housing agency, so I was naturally feeling less stressed about life. So, I learned a valuable less here- that stress is perhaps the subtle the underlying cause with many health problems or common complaints, and that no amount of pill popping or investment in miracle cures can make them better. Now I think I should have spent the money on getting a weekly massage, instead. I'm not going to say then that the Florisene tablets are a complete farce, but that it's worth considering other options before reaching for your wallet and then convincing yourself that you are paying for good health through popping pills. Just be aware that unless the results are immediate and powerfully obvious to you, you are probably wasting your hard-earned cash on a placebo by convincing yourself that the tablets are making a difference, when in fact they are probably not.